CDM Create Digital Musichttp://cdm.link
Create digital music, motion, and more.Fri, 24 May 2019 13:10:02 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.6http://cdm.link/app/uploads/2015/12/cdmlogo-60x60.pngCDM Create Digital Musichttp://cdm.link
323213231537240.706019-74.008588http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/createdigitalmusichttps://feedburner.google.comSubscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with PlusmoSubscribe with Live.comSubscribe with Yourminis.comThis is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site.Mechanical Music Radio brings you 24-7 fairground organs and morehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/createdigitalmusic/~3/xtnHlSBYdZk/
http://cdm.link/2019/05/mechanical-music-radio-brings-you-24-7-fairground-organs-and-more/#respondFri, 24 May 2019 13:10:02 +0000http://cdm.link/?p=92698<p>You asked for it &#8211; you&#8217;ve got it. It&#8217;s the biggest hits of orchestrions, street organs, fairground music, and mechanical tunes, from the 17th Century, 20th century, and yesterday. Oh, you didn&#8217;t ask for that? Well&#8230; you get it anyway. &#8220;We&#8217;ve picked the most iconic instruments of all styles, from 17th century music boxes, to [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link/2019/05/mechanical-music-radio-brings-you-24-7-fairground-organs-and-more/">Mechanical Music Radio brings you 24-7 fairground organs and more</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link">CDM Create Digital Music</a>.</p>You asked for it – you’ve got it. It’s the biggest hits of orchestrions, street organs, fairground music, and mechanical tunes, from the 17th Century, 20th century, and yesterday.

Oh, you didn’t ask for that? Well… you get it anyway. “We’ve picked the most iconic instruments of all styles, from 17th century music boxes, to self playing MIDI accordions,” say the broadcasters of 24-hour-a-day Mechanical Music Radio.

Need a pick me up? You’re covered – there’s “feel good” toe tappers at 6pm and midnight to get your party going plus Friday night uptempo party lineups. And … daily at 6am and noon, because mechanical music lovers party at all kinds of hours. That’s how they roll. (The phrase “24 hour party people” I believe refers to listeners of this streaming radio station.)

Need the latest news of what’s happening in mechanical music events around the world? Top of the hour, every hour. (You need to know what’s up in street organ events, like hourly, way more than traffic and weather together on the 8s.)

Thanks to Graham Dunning, who has single-handedly made mechanical music a modern techno act:

Just discovered Mechanical Music Radio – 24hr streaming fairground organ bangers. "Every hour takes you on a journey though automatic instruments. We've crafted every hour to make sure whenever you tune in, you're never far away from a style of mechanical music you enjoy. "

]]>http://cdm.link/2019/05/mechanical-music-radio-brings-you-24-7-fairground-organs-and-more/feed/092698http://cdm.link/2019/05/mechanical-music-radio-brings-you-24-7-fairground-organs-and-more/Composers doing normal s*** is one of the best things on the Internet right nowhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/createdigitalmusic/~3/XqWjnE1l8X4/
http://cdm.link/2019/05/composers-being-normal/#respondFri, 24 May 2019 12:30:18 +0000http://cdm.link/?p=92693<p>Composers. You&#8217;ve seen them literally put on pedestals, in bronze and granite. Here they are in daily life &#8211; and it&#8217;s charming. Yes, it&#8217;s &#8220;Composers doing normal s***&#8221;, and in the midst of truly grotesque things on Twitter, it&#8217;s the breath of fresh air we need right now. Behold! https://twitter.com/NormalComposers Classic photos are often so [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link/2019/05/composers-being-normal/">Composers doing normal s*** is one of the best things on the Internet right now</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link">CDM Create Digital Music</a>.</p>Composers. You’ve seen them literally put on pedestals, in bronze and granite. Here they are in daily life – and it’s charming.

Yes, it’s “Composers doing normal s***”, and in the midst of truly grotesque things on Twitter, it’s the breath of fresh air we need right now. Behold!

Speaking of Stravinsky, I wish I could find some of the photos of him and other great composers lounging at his pool. But the “famous composer who would most easily fit into an episode of MTV’s cribs” is undoubtedly mister Rite of Spring himself, who escaped the Soviet Union, embraced capitalism in a major way, and found this sweet pad with an enormous pool in Hollywood. Seriously.

]]>http://cdm.link/2019/05/composers-being-normal/feed/092693http://cdm.link/2019/05/composers-being-normal/Playdate is an indie game handheld with a crank from Teenage Engineering, Panichttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/createdigitalmusic/~3/9BMenhaO2VM/
http://cdm.link/2019/05/playdate-handheld-crank-teenage-engineering/#respondThu, 23 May 2019 20:08:51 +0000http://cdm.link/?p=92678<p>Playdate is a Game Boy-ish gaming handheld with a hand crank on it, wired for delivering indie and experimental games weekly. And it comes from an unlikely collaboration: Mac/iOS developer Panic with synth maker Teenage Engineering. Yes, that svelte retro industrial look and unmistakable hand crank are the influence of prolific Swedish game house Teenage [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link/2019/05/playdate-handheld-crank-teenage-engineering/">Playdate is an indie game handheld with a crank from Teenage Engineering, Panic</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link">CDM Create Digital Music</a>.</p>Playdate is a Game Boy-ish gaming handheld with a hand crank on it, wired for delivering indie and experimental games weekly. And it comes from an unlikely collaboration: Mac/iOS developer Panic with synth maker Teenage Engineering.

Yes, that svelte retro industrial look and unmistakable hand crank are the influence of prolific Swedish game house Teenage Engineering. And TE have already demonstrated their love of cranks on their synths, the OP-1 and OP-Z.

This isn’t a Teenage Engineering product, though – and here’s the even more surprising part. The handheld hardware comes from Panic, the long-time Mac and iOS developer. I’ve been a Panic owner over the years, having used their FTP and Web dev products early on in CDM’s life, as did a couple of my designers, and even messing around with Mac icons obsessively back in the day.

But now Panic are publishing games – the spooky Wyoming mystery Firewatch, which has earned them some real street cred, and an upcoming thing with a goose. (Clarification: I should say publishing as these involved outside partners – they’re officially listed as “in collaboration” with those developers, though it does seem they were fairly hands-on.)

The really interesting twist here is that the “Playdate” title is a reference to games that appear weekly. And this is where I might imagine this whole thing dovetailing with music. I mean, first, music and indie games naturally go hand in hand, and from the very start of CDM, the game community have been into strange music stuff.

The obvious crossover at some point would be some unusual music games and without question some kind of music creation tool – like nanoloop or LittleGPTracker. nanoloop got its own handheld iteration recently – see below – but this would be a natural hardware platform too.

Even barring that, though, I imagine some dovetailing audiences for this. And it does look cute.

Specs:
400×240 (that’s way more resolution than the original Game Boy), black and white screen
No backlight (okay, so kind of a pain for handheld chip music performance)
Built-in speaker (a little one)
D-pad, A and B switches
USB-C connector
… and it looks like there is a headphone jack

Not sure what the buttons on top and next to the display do – power and lock, maybe?

Involved game designers are tantalizing, too – and have some interesting music connections:

Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy)

Zach Gage (SpellTower, Ridiculous Fishing)

Bennett Foddy (QWOP, Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, and – music lead again, he was the bassist in Cut Copy, remember them?)

Shaun Inman (also a game composer, as well as a designer of Retro Game Crunch, The Last Rocket, Flip’s Escape, etc.)

This takes me back to that one time I hosted a one-button game exhibition at GDC (the game developer conference) with Kokoromi, the Montreal game collective. That has accessibility implications, too, including for music. (Flashback to their game showcase at the same time.) So there is crossover here, I mean – and intersecting interests between composers and game designers, too.

US$149 will buy you the console and a 12 game subscription. Coming early 2020.

]]>http://cdm.link/2019/05/playdate-handheld-crank-teenage-engineering/feed/092678http://cdm.link/2019/05/playdate-handheld-crank-teenage-engineering/Teenage Engineering has a record label and a pocket modular pop music videohttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/createdigitalmusic/~3/FJmYcHTBoe8/
http://cdm.link/2019/05/teenage-engineering-record-label-pop/#respondThu, 23 May 2019 19:38:15 +0000http://cdm.link/?p=92672<p>Dear young Buster: why do you look so sad and lonely? Don&#8217;t you know that having a yellow Teenage Engineering pocket modular is all the love you need? Okay, so Buster is in fact Millenial Swedish pop star up and comer Emil Lennstrand, and he is the first face of a record label (really) from [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link/2019/05/teenage-engineering-record-label-pop/">Teenage Engineering has a record label and a pocket modular pop music video</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link">CDM Create Digital Music</a>.</p>Dear young Buster: why do you look so sad and lonely? Don’t you know that having a yellow Teenage Engineering pocket modular is all the love you need?

Okay, so Buster is in fact Millenial Swedish pop star up and comer Emil Lennstrand, and he is the first face of a record label (really) from the perpetually-open-to-creative-distraction crew of Teenage Engineering. You see, having done cameras for IKEA and marketing campaigns and various synthesizers and … bicycles and lamps and other things … the Teenagers are now getting into a record label.

It’s surprisingly silky-smooth pop from this otherwise fairly hypernerdy and experimental Stockholm shop. But it does predictably feature Teenage Engineering instruments – in this case the pocket operator modular.

They bill the song as “partly produced” by that system 400 (what – the modular isn’t used on the vocals?). But it’s slick stuff, for sure.

The other star of the music video is this – TE’s pocket operator modular series.

So what’s up with the record label? It’s tough to tell from this one track, but here’s what the Teenagers say for themselves:

first teenage engineering started their own band to field test their instruments. now they are taking the next step starting a record label for songs made with teenage engineering products. there are just two rules, it needs to be a good song (easy) and have at least one of teenage engineerings instruments used in the song. the main distribution platform for their releases will be spotify.

Now that’s some serious Swedish loyalty, going Spotify only.

I’m slightly confused, but intrigued. To my mind, the OP-Z remains the best thing recently from Teenage Engineering hands down, but stay tuned for my explanation of why I feel that way.

And there’s more Teenage Engineering stuff to come, including me joining them in Barcelona during SONAR+D this summer – which means a chance to grill them for more information, of course.

The equipment in question is a Buchla Model 100, 1960s vintage – the modular that defined what now some people call the “West Coast synthesis” style. I learned on one of these, too, though don’t recall any particular hallucinations.

The report comes from a local CBS television affiliate in San Francisco, KPIX, and their broadcast operator Eliot Curtis. (Synthtopia beats me to this one, though I’d seen the video last night – karma for when I was writing up Elektron news next to them this month!)

The LSD itself was located inside the machine, looking like crystals, and while we don’t have the specifics of the test, was apparently tested for authenticity. Finger contact with that substance triggered a nine-hour trip.

You may be wondering how this LSD lasted this long. I haven’t been able to find any data on that – which might suggest whether or not this LSD originated at the Buchla’s manufacture or whether someone added it later, or even if the story is true at all (CBS or not). The only study I could find deals with decomposition in urine, not storage of the chemical itself. But the synth should at least have kept the substance away from light and most likely also humidity, reducing its rate of deterioration. (Eliot also seems… well, fairly convinced!)

Whether you believe the LSD here is from the 60s or not, there is a verified association of Don Buchla and LSD and the use of the drug at some events. (That doesn’t mean everyone was tripping – I heard the Joshua Light Show creators explain that they needed to stay sober for their work, and the optical effects were effectively trippy enough!)

From the CBS report:

In 1966, some Buchla modules ended up on an old school bus purchased by LSD advocate Ken Kesey and his followers known as the Merry Pranksters.

During the last of Kesey’s acid tests — LSD-fueled parties — at Winterland on Halloween in 1966, electronic sounds, possibly from the Buchla, appeared to interrupt an interview of Kesey.

Buchla used LSD and was friends with Owsley Stanley, the genius behind the Grateful Dead’s sound system. Stanley, also known as Bear, was a masterful sound engineer and legendary hero of the counterculture. He was also famous for making the purest LSD to ever hit the street and kept such a low profile that not many photos of him exist.

What is in question here seems to be the exact provenance of these modules, which might locate the history of the alleged LSD discovery. Knowing who reads CDM, I imagine our readers may have some idea.

Also, while Synthtopia and others say this means the ‘red panel’ myth was true, that may be a stretch. The story is, the red paint on Buchla’s red panels had LSD in it – so you could, perhaps, lick the panel if you needed a little extra creative flow in the studio. I had also heard this story related when I was researching the Moog recreation of Keith Emerson’s modular – don’t forget, the East Coast was into some strange trips in the 60s and 70s, too. But those stories notwithstanding, it at least sounds like this particular acid had been stashed inside the machine, not in the paint as the legend goes.

Then again, who cares where it was – synths that can make you literally hallucinate are a pretty wild discovery, let alone the possibility that they might do so decades later.

As for the TV report, it’s worth watching just to see their reporter do the open in front of the synth – this is not your normal evening news special interest story, so thank you, Bay Area, you’ve still got it:

Having just returned from Russia, let me say on behalf of people repairing Soviet instruments, “ah, lucky Americans, they get actual LSD causing their hallucinations, not old Communist chemicals…” (I’ll try to inhale deeply while I’m in Riga near some Polivoks and can let you know what happens. Seriously, don’t lick any eastern bloc electronics. Or… some of our current stuff, for that matter!)

For more Buchla 100 history, here’s an unboxing by the Library of Congress – though no word on whether this got the US government or this University of Chicago researcher high:

Am I Trippin’?

Okay, this story has so many strange things about it that I feel obligated to add a whole addendum just to cover those burning questions. I hinted at these in the story originally, but they keep nagging at me. Those doubts and confusions go something like this:

The LSD should have degraded. KPIX claims the LSD is from the 60s, which is some mind-bendingly old stuff. The molecular structure of the drug should degrade in a way that costs potency – so it will cease getting you high. I need someone with some chemistry background here to determine just when, but half a century would be beyond incredible.

What form was it in? The reporting implies the LSD was in pure crystal form, which would also be pretty incredible. On one hand, it might answer the potency problem. On the other, it raises the question of why someone would store pure crystal form drug at all … least of all inside a synthesizer. (Oh God! The cops are here! Quick, give me that Buchla 100 and a screwdriver!) Oh, speaking of which –

Why would you store drugs in a synth, and then not retrieve the drugs? This seems especially bizarre given they’re inside the synth. I suppose “because you were on acid” would be one explanation, uh, sort of? But that still raises … so many questions. (Who? When? What? Why? Wh.. wha?!)

Who tested this, and how? Different chemical tests have variable results – here I guess I just have to contact KPIX, though this story may mean for now they’re getting a bunch of mail.

How was it absorbed through contact? This one also relates to the potency/degradation and dosage question, naturally. But it seems historically there are some questions about whether skin contact is enough, as some other folks have asked. Whatever happened, top tip: do not rub your eyes or lick your fingers while working with electronics, please. (Also, things like lead poisoning are a lot less fun than an acid trip, I’ve heard.)

Does this really tell us anything about Buchla history? There were no red panels here. That story is even stranger – why didn’t former Buchla engineers have a clear answer to whether the panels were dipped in LSD or not? (Doesn’t that seem like something you’d need to do really intentionally, and doesn’t it seem like you’d remember?) Okay, okay – because it’s fun, yes. I mean, some MeeBlip synthesizers were blessed by a magical troll in the woods of Alberta that granted engineer James Grahame four wishes, and that troll specifically spit on some of our new run of geodes. I won’t tell you what that does for you, but you can find out.

Mainly, I just hope that this story doesn’t spread so far that all of us have to disassemble all our instruments every time we reach a border crossing. I know I’ve got a lost of dust and dirt in there, anyway, and I hope it’s not potent enough to warp anyone’s mind.

But seriously, anyone who can shed light on any of this, I’m all ears. It also seems there would be little reason for the story to be fabricated – but it seems what we’re missing is some details that make what happened make sense.

]]>http://cdm.link/2019/05/a-buchla-synth-repair-turned-into-an-lsd-trip-and-made-the-evening-news/feed/092667http://cdm.link/2019/05/a-buchla-synth-repair-turned-into-an-lsd-trip-and-made-the-evening-news/Enter the freaky trippy acid 90s German synth world of Air Liquidehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/createdigitalmusic/~3/xPX16ksTmDw/
http://cdm.link/2019/05/acid-90s-german-synth-world-air-liquide/#respondWed, 22 May 2019 11:02:22 +0000http://cdm.link/?p=92634<p>If you need a break from buttoned-up techno, dance music as business and fashion statement and morose wallpaper &#8211; take a holiday with some &#8220;trippy mindfkk-muzzikkk.&#8221; Here, we&#8217;ve got 170 tracks from 1991 Cologne to today to get utterly weird. In 1990s Cologne, if the techno scene was spread too thin, you could just manufacture [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link/2019/05/acid-90s-german-synth-world-air-liquide/">Enter the freaky trippy acid 90s German synth world of Air Liquide</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link">CDM Create Digital Music</a>.</p>If you need a break from buttoned-up techno, dance music as business and fashion statement and morose wallpaper – take a holiday with some “trippy mindfkk-muzzikkk.” Here, we’ve got 170 tracks from 1991 Cologne to today to get utterly weird.

In 1990s Cologne, if the techno scene was spread too thin, you could just manufacture a few dozen aliases and DIY the whole thing. At least that seems to be the approach taken by our friends Air Liquide, aka Cem Oral and Ingmar Koch, and a half dozen or so core artists – a band of buddies making weirdo sounds. See the full alias list at bottom, but DJ DB (aka DB Burkeman) traced the history of the duo for the now-defunct THUMP from VICE:

Now, just when you thought it was safe to go back to Germany, Air Liquide have returned to make European electronics mindfkked again.

We’ve got over 16 hours – 170 tracks – on streaming services like Spotify, chronicling the evolution (or whatever it was) of Air Liquide from 1991 through today. The sounds are futuristic, spacey, hyperactive, bizarre – everything in turns. You know you need some broken ultra-fast acid piping through Spotify on your next workout, of course:

Maybe this comes at an ideal time. With so many records sounding like generational loss – copies of copies of 90s records, watered down and sanitized and fed through Instagram – the new Air Liquide project is both real media archaeology and real invention. You get remasters and rereleases of the actual original records, and – this is important – they’re making new stuff.

Air Liquide are back.

So albums like Liquid Air and Mercury EP are returning on colored vinyl and cheap-for-everybody digital. But you can also expect new creations, like a mini-album called “ALTR” which they’ve let CDM know they’re finishing now with German rave legend t.raumschmiere. And there’s upcoming collaboration with American poet Mary S. Applegate – yes, the cousin of Christina Applegate – later this year, along with other releases.

There’s even some unreleased 1992-93 era stuff in store, they tell us.

They have shared this new short bio/history with us, to give you the full story:

AIR LIQUIDE

Born out of innovation & originality, Air Liquide are for many people one of contemporary electronic music cultures most pioneering, important and inspiring projects.

Cem Oral aka Jammin Unit and Ingmar Koch (Dr.Walker) first met in 1989 in a Studio in Frankfurt Main, in Germany. As it often is when like attracts like, it wasn’t long before they recognized their mutual love, not only for experimental, abstract and lo-fi musics but also for Alien, Bigfoot, Telepathy stories of Parallel Universes and Fairytales with a somewhat darker side. So it was just a matter of time before the two were getting together in the studio at the end of their respective dayshifts, to commence their own nightshift recording sessions of abstract noise, cut-ups and experimental soundscapes.

As well as Techno itself, likewise Acid, Industrial Noise, Ernste Musik, Ambient, Kraut Rock, Space-rock, 70s Psychedelia Underground Hip Hop and Musique Concrete were all somehow present and in the mix of the evolving Air Liquide sound, sitting comfortably and perfectly at home with elements of Turkish and Arabian traditional Music’s. The production process took on board a similar innovative and pioneering approach in its fusion of Modern Dub paired with the intensity of the all important groundbreaking Roland 909, 808, 303 and 101 must have technology of the day.

In 1991, they formed Air Liquide.

The fusion that was created boldly incorporated a past it was proud of, free of revivalism or plagiarism, clearly created in and reflecting undeniably a soundscape for the here and now that proclaimed uncompromisingly and assuredly, welcome to the future!

In keeping with every other aspect of their venture, Cem and Ingmar followed their intuition and instincts rather than established tradition, and immersed themselves in freestyle jam sessions, recording the entire one or two hours that they lasted. Upon later listening it would be decided if any parts of the jam session were up to the pairs criteria to be edited out and tweeked into tracks for release.
This is the paradigm within which the Air Liquide creative process birthed “Neue Frankfurter Elektronik Schule”, their first record, released in 1991 on their own label ”Blue”. The first pressing of 1000 copies, released on coloured vinyl, sold out in the first hour after its release!

This was a remarkable achievement, for an unknown band without any direct link to the House Music Scene. Via experimentation Air Liquide reintroduced a living breathing life affirming energy into contemporary music culture, much the same as techno and house did via rave and most importantly dancing. No surprise then that in a very short space of time, accolades like ‘The true heirs to Can’, ‘The Greatful Dead of Techno’ & ‘The spearhead of German Techno’ were incoming thick and fast from the International Music press. Their mixture of Hip Hop, Psyche & Krautrock, Acid & Techno endeared them to a rapidly established and increasing fan base around the Cologne area.

Their eclecticism, originality and self respect, as apparent in a seemingly “no respect for any rules” approach endeared them to that international music press, fans and professionals alike, especially as those professionals were born of the same spirit, as it had been in their own break through years. Like attracts like, the true fans of such musics, such fusions and the spaces that are created for and by these musics, of course could and can feel that, and step up to support it without question.

Then you have guests at your live jams like Michael Rother, Holger Czukay, Luke Vibert, Helmut Zerlett, Craig Anderton, Arno Steffen, Caspar Pound, Fm Einheit. Then your 100% improvised live shows successfully bring surprise, ecstasy, the unexpected and exactly all that people are wanting from you, as well in ways they are not expecting, all in a guaranteed we deliver way, regardless however it may be presented. Then you will be invited to join the roster of USA sm:)e records, the cult sub-label of Profile, that being the label of Run DMC. Likewise in UK, being asked to release on Casper Pounds all important Rising High Records.

And when your fusion of the experimental soul of contemporary electronica and krautrock creates such a superb and flawless fusion that fans from both sound spectrums love you for it, well then one of the all time forward thinking labels ever, Harvest records, will come out of retirement and re activate solely for the purpose of releasing your recordings.

Which is exactly what happened in 1993. That happens if you mean what your doing and if what you are doing is truly valid and unquestionably relevant.

Air Liquide were inspired, moulded by and arose from within that timeless borderless creative Freezone that births truly great Sound & Vision in every respect. It is where they still reside, and it is from there that they now re-emerge to mark 3 decades of living on the frontiers of International ground breaking contemporary ahead of the curve Music, Art, and attendant Technology subcultures.

Air Liquide represent the ultimate fusion of ideals, not believing the hype, not being swayed by past or present dogmas and staying true to their innermost aims and feelings, without question. The real thing if you will. Air Liquide were since their inception in 1991, always have been and still are very much the real thing, through and through!

Modern photos by George Nebieridze; all pictures courtesy Air Liquide.

]]>http://cdm.link/2019/05/acid-90s-german-synth-world-air-liquide/feed/092634http://cdm.link/2019/05/acid-90s-german-synth-world-air-liquide/Gorgeous electro-acoustic instruments mix sculpture and noisehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/createdigitalmusic/~3/sh8KvwjZOBU/
http://cdm.link/2019/05/10cars-electro-acoustic-instruments/#respondTue, 21 May 2019 16:56:46 +0000http://cdm.link/?p=92633<p>Forget analog pedals or digital boxes &#8211; 10cars have made a series of electro-acoustic inventions covered in wires and springs. And they sound wild and strange. &#8220;10cars&#8221; is a Berlin-based multimedia artist. He presented these works at the mighty trade show Superbooth, but these pieces are something else &#8211; part sculpture, part experimental noise instrument. [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link/2019/05/10cars-electro-acoustic-instruments/">Gorgeous electro-acoustic instruments mix sculpture and noise</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link">CDM Create Digital Music</a>.</p>Forget analog pedals or digital boxes – 10cars have made a series of electro-acoustic inventions covered in wires and springs. And they sound wild and strange.

“10cars” is a Berlin-based multimedia artist. He presented these works at the mighty trade show Superbooth, but these pieces are something else – part sculpture, part experimental noise instrument. And they’re one of the more compelling inventions to appear this month.

The lovingly handcrafted pieces meld collage with wires and springs and metal grates, as if someone were making a mouse trap and got distracted and crossed it with a kalimba and a spring reverb. These pieces are dubbed “autumn soundboxes” and range in price from 120 to 360 euros – yes, you can have your own.

10cars is part of the Liquid Sky collective (which now spans Berlin and other bits of Europe, ringleader Ingmar Koch having fled to Portugal). Liquid Sky have made some sound demos to give you a sense of what these are about.

Really lovely stuff.

You get plinks and plonks, otherworldly hums like lost Communist-era student sci film soundtracks or possibly what college radio sounds like on the planet Venus. There’s humming and creepy metallic bits and spacey madness. Well, listen:

Unrelated to anything, but I love that SoundCloud suggested this track when I was playing the sound demos.

More information (for real), plus an email address through which you can order:

]]>http://cdm.link/2019/05/10cars-electro-acoustic-instruments/feed/092633http://cdm.link/2019/05/10cars-electro-acoustic-instruments/Turn your iPad or iPhone into a scriptable MIDI tool with Mozaichttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/createdigitalmusic/~3/unWcYKcxgwk/
http://cdm.link/2019/05/mozaic-scriptable-midi-ipad-iphone/#respondMon, 20 May 2019 17:07:13 +0000http://cdm.link/?p=92621<p>Its creator describes it as a &#8220;workshop in a plug-in.&#8221; Mozaic lets you turn your iOS device into a MIDI filter/controller that does whatever you want &#8211; a toolkit for making your own MIDI gadgets. Oh yeah and it&#8217;s just US$6.99, which is absurd but awesome. The beauty of this, of course, is that you [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link/2019/05/mozaic-scriptable-midi-ipad-iphone/">Turn your iPad or iPhone into a scriptable MIDI tool with Mozaic</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link">CDM Create Digital Music</a>.</p>Its creator describes it as a “workshop in a plug-in.” Mozaic lets you turn your iOS device into a MIDI filter/controller that does whatever you want – a toolkit for making your own MIDI gadgets.

Oh yeah and it’s just US$6.99, which is absurd but awesome.

The beauty of this, of course, is that you can have whatever tools you want without having to wait for someone else to make them for you. Developer Bram Bos has been an innovator in music software for years – he created one of the first drum machines, among some ground-breaking (and sometimes weird) plug-ins, and now is one of the more accomplished iOS developers. So you can vouch for the quality of this one. It might move my iPad Pro back into must-have territory.

Bram writes to CDM that he thought this kind of DIY plug-in could let you make what you need:

“I noticed there is a lot of demand for MIDI filters and plugins (such as Rozeta) in the mobile music world,” he says,”especially with the rising popularity of DAW-less, modular plugin-based jamming and music making. Much of this demand is highly specific and difficult to satisfy with general purpose apps. So I decided to make it easier for people to create such plugins themselves.”

You get ready-to-use LFOs, graphic interface layouts, musical scales, random generators, and “a very easy-to-learn, easy-to-read script language.” And yeah, don’t be afraid, first-time programmers, Bram says: “I’ve designed the language from the ground up to be as accessible and readable as possible.”

To get you started, you’ll find example scripts and modular-style filters, and a big preset collection – with more coming, in response to your requests, Bram tells us. There’s a programming manual, meant both to get beginners going in as friendly a way as possible, and to give more advanced scripters and in-depth guide. And you get plenty of real-world examples.

There are some things you can do with your iOS gadget that you can’t do with most MIDI gadgets, too – like map your tilt sensors to MIDI.

This is an AUv3-compatible plug-in so you can use it in hosts like AUM, ApeMatrix, Cubasis, Nanostudio 2, Audiobus 3, and the like.

The Mozaic Script language is designed from the ground up to be the easiest and most flexible MIDI language on iOS. A language by creatives, for creatives. You’ll only need to write a few lines of script to achieve impressive things – or to create that uber-specific thing that was missing from your MIDI setup.

Check out the Programming Manual on Ruismaker.com to learn about the script language and to get inspiration for awesome scripts of your own.

Mozaic comes with a sizable collection of tutorials and pre-made scripts which you can use out of the box, or which can be a starting point for your own plugin adventures.

Mozaic opens up the world of creative MIDI plugins to anyone willing to put in a few hours and a hot beverage or two.

Practical notes:
– Mozaic requires a plugin host with support for AUv3 MIDI plugins (AUM, ApeMatrix, Cubasis, Auria, Audiobus 3, etc.)
– The standalone mode of Mozaic lets you edit, test and export projects, but for MIDI connections you need to run it inside an AUv3 MIDI host
– MIDI is not sound; Mozaic on its own does not make noise… so bring your own synths, drum machines and other instruments!
– AUv3 MIDI requires iOS11 or higher

With some other MIDI controllers looking long in the tooth, and Liine’s Lemur also getting up in years, I wonder if this might not be the foundation for a universal controller/utility for music. So, yeah, I’d love to see some more touch-savvy widgets, OSC, and even Android support if this catches on. Now go forth, readers, and help it catch on!

]]>http://cdm.link/2019/05/mozaic-scriptable-midi-ipad-iphone/feed/092621http://cdm.link/2019/05/mozaic-scriptable-midi-ipad-iphone/No, Beatport’s subscription will not kill music – here’s how it really workshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/createdigitalmusic/~3/zbCZWXZrhXQ/
http://cdm.link/2019/05/no-beatports-subscription-will-not-kill-music-heres-how-it-really-works/#respondFri, 17 May 2019 18:18:25 +0000http://cdm.link/?p=92596<p>Pioneer and Beatport this week announced new streaming offerings for DJs. And then lots of people kind of freaked out. Let&#8217;s see what&#8217;s actually going on, if any of it is useful to DJs and music lovers, and what we should or shouldn&#8217;t worry about. Artists, labels, and DJs are understandably on edge about digital [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link/2019/05/no-beatports-subscription-will-not-kill-music-heres-how-it-really-works/">No, Beatport&#8217;s subscription will not kill music &#8211; here&#8217;s how it really works</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link">CDM Create Digital Music</a>.</p>Pioneer and Beatport this week announced new streaming offerings for DJs. And then lots of people kind of freaked out. Let’s see what’s actually going on, if any of it is useful to DJs and music lovers, and what we should or shouldn’t worry about.

Artists, labels, and DJs are understandably on edge about digital music subscriptions – and thoughtless DJing. Independent music makers tend not to see any useful revenue or fan acquisition from streaming. So the fear is that a move to the kinds of pricing on Spotify, Amazon, and Apple services would be devastating.

And, well – that’s totally right, you obviously should be afraid of those things if you’re making music. Forget even getting rich – if big services take over, just getting heard could become an expensive endeavor, a trend we’ve already begun to see.

So I talked to Beatport to get some clarity on what they’re doing. We’re fortunate now that the person doing artist and label relations for Beatport is Heiko Hoffmann, who has an enormous resume in the trenches of the German electronic underground, including some 17 years under his belt as editor of Groove, which has had about as much a reputation as any German-language rag when it comes to credibility.

TL:DR

The skinny:

Beatport LINK: fifteen bucks a month, but aimed at beginners – 128k only. Use it for previews if you’re a serious Beatport user, recommend it to your friends bugging you about how they should start DJing, and otherwise don’t worry about it.

Beatport CLOUD: five bucks a month, gives you sync for your Beatport collection. Included in the other stuff here and – saves you losing your Beatport purchases and gives you previews. 128k only. Will work with Rekordbox in the fall, but you’ll want to pay extra for extra features (or stick with your existing download approach).

Beatport LINK PRO: the real news – but it’s not here yet. Works with Rekordbox, costs 40-60 bucks, but isn’t entirely unlimited. Won’t destroy music (uh, not saying something else won’t, but this won’t). The first sign of real streaming DJs – but the companies catering to serious DJs aren’t going to give away the farm the way Apple and Spotify have. In fact, if there’s any problem here, it’s that no one will buy this – but that’s Beatport’s problem, not yours (as it should be).

WeDJ streaming is for beginners, not Pioneer pros

This first point is probably the most important. Beatport (and SoundCloud) have each created a subscription offering that works exclusively with Pioneer’s WeDJ mobile DJ tool. That is, neither of these works with Rekordbox – not yet.

Just in case there’s any doubt, Pioneer has literally made the dominant product image photo some people DJing in their kitchen. So there you go: Rekordbox and and CDJ and TORAIZ equals nightclub, WeDJ equals countertop next to a pan of fajitas.

So yeah, SoundCloud streaming is now in a DJ app. And Beatport is offering its catalog of tracks for US$14.99 a month for the beta, which is a pretty phenomenally low price – and one that would rightfully scare labels and artists.

But it’s important this is in WeDJ as far as DJing. Pioneer aren’t planning on endangering their business ecosystem in Rekordbox, higher-end controllers, and standalone hardware like the CDJ. They’re trying to attract the beginners in the hopes that some of those people will expand the high end market down the road.

By the same token, it’d be incredibly short-sighted if Beatport were to give up on customers paying a hundred bucks a month or so on downloads just to chase growth. Instead, Beatport will split its offerings into a consumer/beginner product (LINK for WeDJ) and two products for serious DJs (LINK Pro and Beatport CLOUD).

And there’s reason to believe that what disrupts the consumer/beginner side might not make ripples when it comes to pros – as we’ve been there already. Spotify is in Algoriddim’s djay. It’s actually a really solid product. But the djay user base doesn’t impact what people use in the clubs, where the CDJ (or sometimes Serato or TRAKTOR) reign supreme. So if streaming in DJ software were going to crash the download market, you could argue it would have happened already.

That’s still a precarious situation, so let’s break down the different Beatport options, both to see how they’ll impact music makers’ business – and whether they’re something you might want to use yourself.

Ce n’est pas un CDJ.

Beatport LINK – the beginner one

First, that consumer service – yeah, it’s fifteen bucks a month and includes the Beatport catalog. But it’s quality-limited and works only in the WeDJ app (and with the fairly toy-like new DDJ-200 controller, which I’ll look at separately).

Who’s it for? “The Beginner DJs that are just starting out will have millions of tracks to practice and play with,” says Heiko. “Previously, a lot of this market would have been lost to piracy. The bit rate is 128kbs AAC and is not meant for public performance.”

But us serious Beatport users might want to mess around with it, too – it’s a place you can audition new tracks for a fairly low monthly fee. “It’s like having a record shop in your home,” says Heiko.

If you think fifteen bucks a month for everything Beatport is a terrible business idea, don’t worry – Beatport agree. “This is the first of our Beatport LINK products,” says Heiko. “This is not a ‘Spotify for dance music.’ It’s a streaming service for DJs and makes Beatport’s extensive electronic music catalog available to stream audio into the WeDJ app.” The bigger picture looks to higher quality streams, offline ‘locker,’ and the stuff serious DJs will need. And yeah, Beatport want more money for that, which is good – because you want more money charged for that as a producer or label. But before we get to that, let’s talk about the ‘sync’ option, the other thing available now:

WeDJ – a mobile gateway drug for DJs, or so Pioneer hopes. (NI and Algoriddim did it first; let’s see who does it better.)

How you get paid: Heiko explains: “We create a royalty pool to share with all labels and then distribute based on number of plays. The per-play pay fee will change depending on subscriptions/plays.”

By the way, part of the problem with iTunes was that Apple – who care more about you buying iPhones, presumably, than they do music downloads – more or less buried download sales once they went with subscriptions. So since Beatport is still in the download business, will LINK try to direct some of these new and beginning DJs to the store?

The answer is yes; Beatport tells us they’re investigating how to do this, but there will be at least an initial effort. “For the launch of the Rekordbox integration we will have a page with curated playlists and charts (by our curation team but also by labels, DJs and other partners) to discover music for LINK and also to download it, says Heiko.”

Beatport CLOUD – the sync one

Okay, so streaming may be destroying music but … you’ve probably still sometimes wanted to have access to digital downloads you’ve bought without having to worry about hard drive management or drive and laptop failures.

Beatport CLOUD does that, the sync/locker making a comeback, with €/$ 4.99 a month fee and no obligation or contract. It’s also included free in LINK – so for me, for instance, since I hate promos and like to dig for my own music even as press and DJ, I’m seriously thinking of the fifteen bucks to get full streaming previews, mixing in WeDJ, and CLOUD.

There are some other features here, too:

Re-download anything, unlimited. I heard from a friend – let’s call him Pietro Kerning – that maybe a stupid amount of music he’d (uh, or “she’d”) bought on Beatport was now scattered across a random assortment of hard drives. I would never do such a thing, because I organize everything immaculately in all aspects of my life in a manner becoming a true professional, but now this “friend” will easily be able to grab music anywhere in the event of that last-minute DJ gig.

By the same token you can:

Filter all your existing music in a cloud library. Not that I need to, perfectly organized individual, but you slobs need this, of course.

Needle-drop full previews. Hear 120 seconds from anywhere in a track – for better informed purchases. (Frankly, this makes me calmer as a label owner, even – I would totally rather you hear more of our music.)

There should be some obvious bad news here – this only works with Beatport purchased music. You can’t upload music the way some services have worked in the past. But I think given the current legal landscape, if you want that, set up your own backup server.

What I like about this, at least, is that this store isn’t losing stuff you’ve bought from them. (Bandcamp does a nice job in this respect – and of course it’s the store I use the most when not using Beatport.)

Update: I got a couple of questions on this tier – mainly, why it’s five bucks, and where that money goes. I’m unclear whether this fee, download limits, and previews are entirely Beatport-related, or whether they also tie into rights management and deals with the labels, so I’ll try to find that out. I also do wonder if Beatport will need to add more functionality to this or the ‘pro’ tiers to entice users. But we’ll see.

The new Beatport cloud.

How you get paid: Yes, CLOUD adds a fee – and that fee does go partly to you. “CLOUD provides two additional services” say Heiko. “The revenue from CLOUD will be shared with labels/suppliers.”

Beatport LINK Pro – what’s coming

There are very few cases where someone says, “hey, good news – this will be expensive.” But music right now is a special case. And it’s good news that Beatport is launching a more expensive service.

For labels and artists, it means a serious chance to stay alive. (I mean, even for a label doing a tiny amount of download sales, this can mean that little bit of cash to pay the mastering engineer and the person who did the design for the cover, or to host a showcase in your local club.)

For serious users using that service, it means a higher quality way of getting music than other subscription services – and that you support the people who make the music you love, so they keep using it.

Or, at least, that’s the hope.

What Beatport is offering at the “pro” tiers does more and costs more. Just like Pioneer doesn’t want you to stop buying CDJs just because they have a cheap controller and app, Beatport doesn’t want you to stop spending money for music just because they have a subscription for that controller and app. Heiko explains:

With the upcoming Pioneer rekordbox integration, Beatport will roll out two new plans – Beatport LINK Pro and Beatport LINK Pro+ – with an offline locker and 256kbps AAC audio quality (which is equivalent to 320kbps MP3, but you’re the expert here). This will be club ready, but will be aimed at DJs who take their laptops to clubs, for now. They will cost €39,99/month and €59,99/month depending on how many tracks you can put in the offline locker (50 and 100 respectively).

You’ll get streaming inside Rekordbox with the basic LINK, too – but only at 128k. So it’ll work for previewing and trying out mixes, but the idea is you’ll still pay more for higher quality. (And of course that also still means paying more to work with CDJs, which is also a big deal.)

And yeah, Beatport agree with me. “We think streaming for professional DJ use should be priced higher,” says Heiko. “And we also need to be sure that this is not biting into the indie labels and artists (and therefore also Beatport’s own) revenues,” he says.

What Heiko doesn’t say is that this could increase spending, but I think it actually could. Looking at my own purchase habits and talking to others, a lot of times you look back and spend $100 for a big gig, but then lapse a few months. A subscription fee might actually encourage you to spend more and keep your catalog up to date gig to gig.

It’s also fair to hope this could be good for under-the-radar labels and artists even relative to the status quo. If serious DJs are locked into subscription plans, they might well take a chance on lesser known labels and artists since they’re already paying. I don’t want to be overly optimistic, though – a lot of this will be down to how Beatport handles its editorial offerings and UX on the site as this subscription grows. That means it’s good someone like Heiko is handling relations, though, as I expect he’ll be hearing from us.

Really, one very plausible scenario is that streaming DJing doesn’t catch on initially because it’s more expensive – and people in the DJ world may stick to downloads. A lot of that in turn depends on things like how 5G rolls out worldwide (which right now involves a major battle between the US government and Chinese hardware vendor Huawei, among other things), plus how Pioneer deals with a “Streaming CDJ.”

The point is, you shouldn’t have to worry about any of that. And there’s no rush – smart companies like Beatport will charge sustainable amounts of money for subscriptions and move slowly. The thing to be afraid of is if Apple or Spotify rush out a DJ product and, like, destroy independent music. If they try it, we should fight back.

How you get paid: The PRO rates will represent a higher rate than what you get from the standard LINK services – because of the higher fee. And it’s more like the fee you get from downloads, not the cents-per-play trainwreck that is services like Beatport.

“The revenue share for LINK streaming between Beatport and the labels/suppliers (depending if a label has a direct deal or if we get the music from a distributor) is the same as for our downloads,” says Heiko. “If producers/musicians want to know more about their revenue share they can contact their label/distributor,” he says.

About the ‘locker’

Correction: I incorrectly described the CLOUD product as being a ‘locker.’ That term is meant to be applied to the virtual bin where a fixed number of tracks are available offline without an Internet connection.

Some folks will remember that Beatport bought the major “locker” service for digital music – when it acquired Pulselocker. [link to our friends at DJ TechTools]

On the coming LINK Pro plans, the locker is part of what you pay for at the higher subscription rate. It gives you the ability to access music from your subscription in places you don’t have an internet connection. Now, lots of us DJ with more than 50-100 tracks on a stick – so you can bet a lot of people will still wind up for now using USB sticks.

Will labels and artists benefit?

If it sounds like I’m trying to be a cheerleader for Beatport, I’m really not. If you look at the top charts in genres, a lot of Beatport is, frankly, dreck – even with great editorial teams trying to guide consumers to good stuff. And centralization in general has a poor track record when it comes to underground music.

No, what I am biased toward is products that are real, shipping, and based on serious economics. So much as I’m interested in radical ideas for decentralizing music distribution, I think those services have yet to prove their feasibility.

And I think it’s fair to give Beatport some credit for being a business that’s real, based on actual revenue that’s shared between labels and artists. It may mean little to your speedcore goth neo-Baroque label (BLACK HYPERACID LEIPZIG INDUSTRIES, obviously – please let’s make that). But Beatport really is a cornerstone for a lot of the people making dance music now, on a unique scale.

There are more questions here – like how that heftier subscription fee is divided among labels – and I’ll be looking at that more as we get closer to launch.

But the basic vision for LINK seems to be solid when it comes to revenue, at least as a place to start. Heiko again:

LINK will provide an additional revenue source to the labels and artists. The people who are buying downloads on Beatport are doing so because they want to DJ/perform with them. LINK is not there to replace that.

But I think for the reason I’ve already repeated – that the “serious” and “amateur”/wedding/beginner DJ gulf is real and not just a thing snobs talk about – LINK and WeDJ probably won’t disrupt label business, even that much to the positive. Look ahead to Rekordbox integration and the higher tiers. And yeah, I’m happy to spend the money, because I never get tired of listening to music – really.

And what if you don’t like this? Talk to your label and distributor. And really, you should be doing that anyway. Heiko explains:

Unlike other DSP’s, Beatport LINK has been conceived and developed in close cooperation with the labels and distributors on Beatport. Over the past year, new contracts were signed and all music used for LINK has been licensed by the right holders. However, if labels whose distributors have signed the new contract don’t want their catalog to be available for LINK they can opt out. But again: LINK is meant to provide an additional revenue source to the labels and artists.

Have a good weekend, and let us know if you have questions or comments. I’ll be looking at this for sure, as I think there isn’t enough perspective coming from serious producers who care about the details of technology.

First, don’t think of it as Beatport moving from downloads to streaming. “It’s really a complimentary service to downloads,” says Heiko.

And he observes that your revenue as an independent label/producer is really their core business: “96% of Beatport’s revenue is paid to independent labels,” says Heiko. “Beatport’s per stream rate is very likely to be higher than other streaming services: we are putting the lion share of the LINK revenue into label payments. Unlike other services the fee will not be shared with music from other more mainstream genres which make up the majority of most streaming service’s payments.”

]]>http://cdm.link/2019/05/no-beatports-subscription-will-not-kill-music-heres-how-it-really-works/feed/092596http://cdm.link/2019/05/no-beatports-subscription-will-not-kill-music-heres-how-it-really-works/KORG’s nutekt NTS-1 is a fun, little kit – and open to ‘logue developershttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/createdigitalmusic/~3/EEl1PfGLdLg/
http://cdm.link/2019/05/korg-nutekt-nts-1-superbooth/#respondThu, 16 May 2019 15:50:31 +0000http://cdm.link/?p=92583<p>KORG has already shown that opening up oscillators and effects to developers can expand their minilogue and prologue keyboards. But now they&#8217;re doing the same for the nutekt NTS-1 &#8211; a cute little volca-ish kit for synths and effects. Build it, make wild sounds, and &#8230; run future stuff on it, too. Okay, first &#8211; [&#8230;]</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link/2019/05/korg-nutekt-nts-1-superbooth/">KORG&#8217;s nutekt NTS-1 is a fun, little kit &#8211; and open to &#8216;logue developers</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdm.link">CDM Create Digital Music</a>.</p>KORG has already shown that opening up oscillators and effects to developers can expand their minilogue and prologue keyboards. But now they’re doing the same for the nutekt NTS-1 – a cute little volca-ish kit for synths and effects. Build it, make wild sounds, and … run future stuff on it, too.

Okay, first – even before you get to any of that, the NTS-1 is stupidly cool. It’s a little DIY kit you can snap together without any soldering. And it’s got a fun analog/digital architecture with oscillators, filter, envelope, arpeggiator, and effects.

Basically, if you imagine having a palm-sized, battery-powered synthesis studio, this is that.

Japan has already had access to the Nutekt brand from KORG, a DIY kit line. (Yeah, the rest of the world gets to be jealous of Japan again.) This is the first – and hopefully not the last – time KORG has opened up that brand name to the international scene.

And the NTS-1 is one we’re all going to want to get our hands on, I’ll bet. It’s full of features:

That would be fun enough, and we could stop here. But the NTS-1 is also built on the same developer board for the KORG minilogue and prologue keyboards. That SDK opens up developers’ powers to make their own oscillators, effects, and other ideas for KORG hardware. And it’s a big deal the cute little NTS-1 is now part of that picture, not just the (very nice) larger keyboards. I’d see it this way:

NTS-1 buyers can get access to the same custom effects and synths as if they bought the minilogue or prologue.

minilogue and prologue owners get another toy they can use – all three of them supporting new stuff.

Developers can use this inexpensive kit to start developing, and don’t have to buy a prologue or minilogue. (Hey, we’ve got to earn some cash first so we can go buy the other keyboard! Oh yeah I guess I have also rent and food and things to think about, too.)

And maybe most of all –

Developers have an even bigger market for the stuff they create.

This is still a prototype, so we’ll have to wait, and no definite details on pricing and availability.

Waiting.

Yep, still waiting.

Wow, I really want this thing, actually. Hope this wait isn’t long.

I’m in touch with KORG and the analog team’s extraordinary Etienne about the project, so stay tuned. For an understanding of the dev board itself (back when it was much less fun – just a board and no case or fun features):

Oh, and I’ll also say – the dev platform is working. Sinevibes‘ Artemiy Pavlov was on-hand to show off the amazing stuff he’s doing with oscillators for the KORG ‘logues. They sound the business, covering a rich range of wavetable and modeling goodness – and quickly made me want a ‘logue, which of course is the whole point. But he seems happy with this as a business, which demonstrates that we really are entering new eras of collaboration and creativity in hardware instruments. And that’s great. Artemiy, since I had almost zero time this month, I better come just hang out in Ukraine for extended nerd time minus distractions.

Artemiy is happily making sounds as colorful as that jacket. Check sinevibes.com.